I would make a chart of our life,
know why just this circle of creatures
completes the world.
completes the world.
Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852
When I breathe on them
I find them all alive
and ready to skip.
This must be as peculiarly
a winter animal as any.
It may truly be said
to live in snow.
It is the creature of the thaw.
Moist snow is its element.
October 27. Long-continued rain and wind come to settle the accounts of the year . . . The snow-flea (as to-day) is washed out of the bark of meadow trees and covers the surface of the flood. October 27, 1857
October 28. I think it was the 18th that I first noticed snow-fleas on the surface of the river amid the weed at its edge. October 18, 1855
November 11. Snow-fleas are skipping on the surface of the water at the edge, and spiders running about. These become prominent now. November 11, 1858
November 25. For some days since colder weather, I notice the snow-fleas skipping on the surface the shore. I see them today skipping by thousands in the wet clamshells left by the muskrats. These are rather a cool-weather phenomenon. (Probably washed out by rise of river) November 25, 1859
December 7. Saw a pile of snow-fleas in a rut in the wood-path, six or seven inches long and three quarters of an inch high, to the eye exactly like powder, as if a sportsman had spilled it from his flask; and when a stick was passed through the living and skipping mass, each side of the furrow preserved its edge as in powder. December 7, 1852
December 10. Weather warmer; snow softened . . . Snow-fleas in paths; first I have seen. December 10, 1854
December 16. The snow everywhere is covered with snow-fleas like pepper. When you hold a mass in your hand, they skip and are gone before you know it. They are so small that they go through and through the new snow. They look like some powder which the hunter has spilled in the path. December 16, 1850
January 5. Still thaws. This afternoon (as probably yesterday), it being warm and thawing, though fair, the snow is covered with snow-fleas. Especially they are sprinkled like pepper for half a mile in the tracks of a woodchopper in deep snow. These are the first since the snow came. January 5, 1854
January 6. I took up snow in the tracks at dark, but could find no fleas in it then, though they were exceedingly abundant before. Do they go into the snow at night? January 6, 1854
January 7. I saw what
looked like clay-colored snow-fleas on the under side of
a stone. January 7, 1855
January 7. A thaw begins, with a southerly wind. . . As soon as I reach the neighborhood of the woods I begin to see the snow-fleas, more than a dozen rods from woods, amid a little goldenrod, etc., where, methinks, they must have come up through the snow. Last night there was not one to be seen. January 7, 1860
January 9. Find many snow-fleas, apparently frozen, on the snow. January 9, 1854
January 10. I cannot thaw out to life the snow-fleas which yesterday covered the snow like pepper, in a frozen state. How much food they must afford to small birds, chickadees, etc. January 10, 1854
January 14. It is warm, and the snow-fleas are about. January 14, 1853
January 15. For the first time this winter I notice snow-fleas this afternoon in Walden Wood. Wherever I go they are to be seen, especially in the deepest ruts and foot-tracks. Their number is almost infinite. It is a rather warm and moist afternoon, and feels like rain. I suppose that some peculiarity in the weather has called them forth from the bark of the trees. January 15, 1852
January 22. Harris told me on the 19th that he had never found the snow-flea. January 22, 1854
January 22. There were also many small brown grasshoppers (not to mention spiders of various sizes and snow-fleas) on the ice. January 22, 1859
January 22.The snow-fleas are thickest along the edge of the wood here, but I find that they extend quite across the river, though there are comparatively few over the middle. There are generally fewer and fewer the further you are from the shore. Nay, I find that they extend quite across Fair Haven Pond. There are two or three inches of snow on the ice, and thus they are revealed. There are a dozen or twenty to a square rod on the very middle of the pond. When I approach one, it commonly hops away, and if it gets a good spring it hops a foot or more, so that it is at first lost to me. Though they are scarcely the twentieth of an inch long they make these surprising bounds, or else conceal themselves by entering the snow. We have now had many days of this thawing weather, and I believe that these fleas have been gradually hopping further and further out from the shore. To-day, perchance, it is water, a day or two later ice, and no fleas are seen on it. Then snow comes and covers the ice, and if there is no thaw for a month, you see no fleas for so long. But, at least soon after a thaw, they are to be seen on the centre of ponds at least half a mile across. Though this is my opinion, it is by no means certain that they come here thus, for I am prepared to believe that the water in the middle may have had as many floating on it, and that these were afterward on the surface of the ice, though unseen, and hence under the snow when it fell, and ready to come up through it when the thaw came. But what do they find to eat in apparently pure snow so far from any land? Has their food come down from the sky with the snow? They must themselves be food for many creatures. This must be as peculiarly a winter animal as any. It may truly be said to live in snow. January 22, 1860
January 23. There is a cold northwest wind, and I notice that the snow-fleas which were so abundant on this water yesterday have hopped to some lee, i. e., are collected like powder under the southeast side of posts or trees or sticks or ridges in the ice. You are surprised to see that they manage to get out of the wind. On the southeast side of every such barrier along the shore there is a dark line or heap of them. January 23, 1859
January 26. To-day I see a few snow-fleas on the Walden road and a slight blueness in the chinks, it being cloudy and melting. January 26, 1852
January 30.
The snow-flea seems to be a creature whose summer and prime of life is a thaw in the winter. It seems not merely to enjoy this interval like other animals, but then chiefly to exist. It is the creature of the thaw. Moist snow is its element. That thaw which merely excites the cock to sound his clarion as it were calls to life the snow-flea. January 30, 1860
January 31. At 8 A. M., the river rising, the thin yellowish ice of last night, next the shore, is, as usual, much heaved up in ridges, as if beginning to double on itself, and here and there at 9 o'clock, being cracked thus in the lowest parts, the water begins to spurt up in some places in a stream, as from an ordinary pump, and flow along these valleys; and thus we have soon reëstablished an edging of shallow yellowish or oil-colored water all along the river and meadows, covered with floating snow-fleas. January 31, 1855
February 1. Lying flat, I quench my thirst where it is melted about it, blowing aside the snow-fleas. February 1, 1855
February 1. There has been no January thaw, though one prophesied it a fortnight ago because he saw snow-fleas. The ponds are yielding a good crop of ice. The eaves have scarcely run at all. It has been what is called "an old-fashioned winter." February 1, 1856
February 2. As it is a melting day, the snow is everywhere peppered with snow-fleas, even twenty rods from the woods, on the pond and meadows. February 2, 1854
February 9. There are snow-fleas, quite active, on the half-melted snow on the middle of Walden. February 9, 1854
February 11. 7.30 a. m. — Snow-fleas lie in black patches like some of those dark rough lichens on rocks, or like ink-spots three or four inches in diameter, about the grass-stems or willows, on the ice which froze last night. When I breathe on them I find them all alive and ready to skip. Also the water, when I break the ice, arouses them. February 11, 1854
February 12. Another cold morning. The patches of snow-fleas on the ice are now much reduced, but still, when I kneel and breathe on them, they begin to skip, though the last two nights and all day yesterday have been severely cold. They look like little patches of rust on the ice. February 12, 1854
March 10. The past has been a winter of such unmitigated severity that I have not chanced to notice a snow-flea, which are so common in thawing days. March 10, 1856
March 15. Mr. Chase . . . who has lived a hundred miles distant in New Hampshire, speaks of the snow-fleas as a spring phenomenon, – probably because the winter is more uniformly cold there, – and says that they think it time to stop making maple-sugar when they observe them. They get into the sap by myriads and trouble them much. March 15, 1856
March 20. Under these wet leaves I find myriads of the snow-fleas, like powder. March 20, 1853
March 22. Where the sap is flowing, the red maple being cut, the inner bark turns crimson. I see many snow-fleas on the moist maple chips. March 22, 1856
April 9. When I return to my boat, I see the snow-fleas like powder, in patches on the surface of the smooth water, amid the twigs and leaves. April 9, 1856
April 22. There are myriads of snow-fleas in the water amid the bushes, apparently washed out of the bark by the rain and rise of river. April 22, 1856
May 15. This spring was filled and covered with a great mass of beech leaves, amid and beneath which, damp and wet as they were, were myriads of snow-fleas and also their white exuviæ; the latter often whitening a whole leaf, mixed with live ones. It looks as if for coolness and moisture which the snow had afforded – they were compelled to take refuge here. May 15, 1856
May 18. Cleared out the Beech Spring . . .This spring was filled and covered with a great mass of beech leaves, amid and beneath which, damp and wet as they were, were myriads of snow-fleas and also their white exuviae; the latter often whitening a whole leaf, mixed with live ones. It looks as if for coolness and moisture — which the snow had afforded — they were compelled to take refuge here. May 18, 1856
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Snow Flea
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality."
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2026
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